What are Amazon Alexa Skills?

Amazon's Alexa is the voice-activated, interactive AI bot, or personal assistant, that lets people speak with their Amazon Echo, Echo Dot and other Amazon smart home devices. Like Siri and Cortana, Alexa is designed to respond to a number of different commands and even converse with users. Alexa comes with more than a few capabilities: playing music, pulling up the weather or even reading news. But Alexa Skills are apps that give Alexa even more abilities, letting her speak to more devices even websites.

How does Alexa work? Once you buy an Amazon Alexa device — Amazon Tap or an Echo Dot — the device connects through WiFi or Bluetooth to the internet and then to other devices. With the most common devices, the Amazon Echo and Echo Dot, people merely say "Alexa," which wakes up the device, and then ask for what they want. Alexa Skills radically expands the bots repertoire, allowing users to perform more actions with voice-activated control through Alexa.

Many Alexa Skills are tailored for news and information. Alexa's Flash Briefing, a quick update of top headlines, can be pulled from a preferred media source: Fox News, NPR, The Wall Street Journal, and The Daily Show are just a few options. Users can also check train or bus schedules, check for someplace to eat through Restaurant Finder, check the traffic, or find a select store's hours.

Alexa can also pull up recipes, answer cooking questions or explain how to mix a perfect Manhattan. There are Alexa Skills that bring up random facts, teach people to use manners by saying "please" and "thank you," and even generate an insult through the Insult Generator.

Alexa Skills can beef up spelling skills and even let students access their grades.

Educational Skills

Alexa Skills can also be educational. One Alexa Skill, Spell Master, will spell a word aloud. Another, through Canvas, the Learning Management System, has a skill that lets people access information about their courses and grades, but not access course content.

Game Skills for Alexa

Alexa is linked to several game skills, letting people play Jeopardy! and Would You Rather. There are games that let users play act through a Dungeon Adventure, test their knowledge of movie quotes, or run through mental and physical challenges against the show 24.

There are several Alexa Skills for helping users reach their inner zen.

Relax, Pray, or Work Out with Alexa Skills

Been thinking about meditating? Yes, there's an Alexa Skill for that too — whether someone wants a Guided Meditation or just Sleep and Relaxation Sounds such as wind chimes, thunderstorms or ocean waves to help someone relax or fall asleep.

Alexa Skills also link to prayers, tell people about upcoming holy days if you're of the Bahá'i faith, and even answer questions such as "Is It Kosher?" And for those who can't afford a personal trainer, there's a virtual gym of Alexa Skills that include quick workouts or exercises to build up abs through a 5-Minute Plank Workout.

With so many people and companies making Alexa Skills, her abilities are endless. Help in picking lottery numbers? There's a skill for that called Lotto Now. There is even a meowing app, Meow!, that lets people, or their cat, have a meowing conversation with Alexa.

Of course there's an Alexa Skill that meows to a cat.

Like all AI devices that use National Language Processing or NLP, Alexa does not understand all voices easily. But she learns to understand her people over time. She does, however, require people to speak in simple terms, with appropriate pauses, and use specific word orders. There are many times when she will say "I'm sorry, I don't know the answer to that question." More than likely, she doesn't recognize a word order or misunderstood the question.

Don't have an Amazon Alexa device? Amazon is now licensing the Alexa AI to other manufacturers widening the number of gadgets where Alexa can be used, from the Triby smart kitchen speaker to FitBit. The Ford SYNC 3 AppLink even lets a car and house speak to each other.

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How can I make my own Alexa Skills?

Because Amazon opened up the development of Alexa Skills to anyone with the free Alexa Skills Kit (ASK) in 2015, anyone can create an Alexa Skill. As Alexa uses Natural Language Programing (NLP), those looking to build a skill don't need to worry about complex speech recognition. The ASK tools also makes it easier for novices to work with sophisticated NLP ideas.

The ambivalence of Alexa ownership

With new Alexa Skills constantly bring released, there a new skill for almost any need. With an Alexa-enabled device everyone can have their own Alexa to boss around. Is that something people want? Due to the huge number of Alexa Skills out there already — and the number of Amazon Alexa devices already sold — the resounding answer to that questions is: "Alexa…"